


A Sad Tale's Best for Winter

by talefeathers



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Sad, all the stuff you've come to expect from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a while, it seemed that the feud had truly ended.  </p><p>The Montagues and the Capulets had seen what their hatred could do to the innocents raised in its wake, had seen their children kill each other and kill themselves, and they were finally ready to be done with it.  They were finally ready for peace.  Or at least, that is how Escalus interpreted the quiet in the streets.  He did everything he could to rule Verona well, but the poor man had never had much foresight.</p><p>He did not see that this was only the calm before the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sad Tale's Best for Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercutioLives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercutioLives/gifts).



> Please direct all complaints to Red_Mercutio aka mercutiodreams.tumblr.com because this was all their fault.

For a while, it seemed that the feud had truly ended. 

The Montagues and the Capulets had seen what their hatred could do to the innocents raised in its wake, had seen their children kill each other and kill themselves, and they were finally ready to be done with it. They were finally ready for peace. Or at least, that is how Escalus interpreted the quiet in the streets. He did everything he could to rule Verona well, but the poor man had never had much foresight.

He did not see that this was only the calm before the storm.

“He’s once again slipped out of satisfying justice,” the Capulets whispered in the privacy of their homes. “The snake, he was always kinder to the Montagues because of that nephew of his. They only lost one child while we suffered two, and Escalus calls this fair? He fancies himself impartial when really he doesn’t have the guts to do what has to be done, to truly even the score.”

“And what did he lose?” someone dared to venture one day when that bloody summer had passed into a sleepy autumn. “He professes to have lost a brace of kinsmen, but what was Paris to him, really? He barely knew the boy compared to Mercutio. He has not suffered as we have suffered. And until he has, how can he know what justice must be served?”

Most of the Capulets shushed this, pretended they had not heard it; the Montagues were their enemy, not the prince. But there were a few, an angry few, who agreed.

If the prince would not balance Capulet losses with those of Montague, then his own dear blood would pay the difference.

\--

It was snowing.

It had been four months since the last civil brawl; four months since Romeo and Juliet had been found dead in each other’s arms. Four months was a long time, but it had not seemed so to Escalus. He was mending, certainly, but slowly. There was no swift recovery for a man who’d lost his child.

“Uncle? Are you coming?”

Escalus shook himself from the daydream he’d been trapped in and pushed himself away from his desk. He stood and managed to smile at his remaining nephew.

“Of course. Forgive me.”

As poorly as Escalus fared, Valentine fared still worse. While, like Escalus, the boy was healing, the loss of something as fundamental as a big brother was not a pain that ever truly faded. He had only lately begun accepting his uncle’s attempts at comfort, and Escalus did what he could, but he knew that, while it might help some, it would never be enough. The prince was Valentine’s guardian, but Mercutio had raised that boy.

“We are not late, are we?” Escalus asked, shrugging into his winter cloak. Valentine shook his head.

“If we leave now we should arrive on time.”

“Very good.”

Escalus had gone to evening mass on Sunday for as long as he had been the prince; not only did he get most of his work done in the morning, but evening mass was always the less crowded of the two, and he preferred to keep a low profile when he could. This became especially important upon the death of his sister, when Mercutio and Valentine had first been put in his charge at the tempestuous ages of eight and four. The fewer people were forced to try to hear the homily through their church giggles, the better.

“It’s a lovely evening,” Escalus commented, taking a deep breath of brisk December air. Nothing cleared his head so much as this weekly walk to the chapel.

Valentine shrugged in response, but Escalus thought that these walks probably did a bit of good for him, too. They still had a long road ahead of them, to be sure, but they were getting better day by day. They both were.

 

They had walked half the distance to the chapel in silence when the world around them erupted with sound.

“ _Get him!_ ” was the first shout, and after that the voices ran together in a tumult. Escalus clutched Valentine’s arm, but no sooner had he done this than his nephew was wrenched from him by a pair of young men about Mercutio’s age. Escalus made to run after them but was grabbed from behind, his arms pinned behind his back. He was forced to kneel. He was forced to watch.

“No,” he breathed when one of the boys who had pulled Valentine from him now drew a dagger. He began to struggle in earnest when he saw fear flash in his nephew's eyes, terror rising in his own throat like bile. “Release him! Take your vengeance on me, but leave him! _Please!_ ”

His voice was raw with fear, stripped of dignity, but it did not matter. They did not listen. The boy who had drawn the dagger now buried it in Valentine’s stomach, and Escalus let go a torn, anguished scream.

The young men holding the prince released him, and he immediately scrambled through the snow toward where his nephew now crumpled to the ground.

“ _This!_ ” the boy who’d stabbed Valentine shouted. Escalus pulled his bleeding charge into his arms, shushed him, pushed his snow-damp hair back from his forehead. “ _This_ is what justice looks like, prince! We begged recompense for our losses, we cried out for Montague blood! For Tybalt! For Juliet! And you gave us nothing for our grief, though it far outweighed theirs! Now your blood shall pay the forfeit! A brace of kinsmen for a brace of ours!”

“Uncle.”

“I’m here, I’m here.” 

Escalus had heard the Capulet boy’s appeal, but he would deal with it later. He would be here for his last boy, his youngest. He would not let a second child of his face the dark alone.

“It -- hurts,” Valentine whimpered, shivering and clutching his wound. “M-Mercutio, I want -- Mercutio.”

“I know,” Escalus said, able by some miracle to keep his voice steady. “I know, cub, you’re going to see him soon. He will take all of the hurt away. He always takes good care of you, hm? You must give him my love when you see him.”

Valentine nodded. His eyes began to slip shut.

“Uncle…?”

“Yes, my son, I’m here.”

“I’m cold.”

Escalus could not help but choke out a sob as he pulled his little boy closer in an attempt to warm him in his final moments, to lift him further out of the snow. But it was too late. Valentine was gone.

Escalus broke then, clutching his nephew’s limp body to him and wailing, and it was only then that the young Capulets began to shuffle uncomfortably. Only then did they seem to realize that they had made a grave mistake.

After a few moments, the prince looked up at them, eyes red-rimmed and murderous.

“You have destroyed the last of my patience,” he snarled. “No longer will I understand mercy. No longer will I bend to pleas for _justice._ I have no heirs anymore for whom to set an example. _I will burn house Capulet to the ground._ ”

The attackers fled at that, but there was no need to pursue them. His revenge would be swift and uncomplicated; there was no reason to hurry it. For now, he would hold his last boy, his youngest, his Valentine, until the cold rendered him mercifully numb.


End file.
